HYDRO-ELECTRICITY

Patea Mail, Volume XLVI, 27 August 1923, Page 2

HYDRO-ELECTRICITY

REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENTS Tho suggestion by an English engineer that hydro-electrical development in New Zealand is out-running markets does not meet with any endorsement from Mr M. H. Bollinger, M.N.Z. Soc. C.E., of Wellington, who has had an excellent opportunity of seeing post-war hydro-electrical developments in Europe, and particularly in Sweden. There are no less than 367 hydro-electrical stations in Sweden, and the latest supplies twice the horsepower expected from Mangahao. Private enterprise, the Government, and the municipalities are all in the business. Many people have taken power from the Doal River, and the municipality of Stockholm has now taken about all that was left, by bui(dir¥; dam-walls and embankments to th« length of about ten miles—a triumpw of engineering. Hydro-electrical power is largely used in the paper pulp industry, and Mr Bollinger saw twice the power of the Wellington City Council's electric lighting station turned on to one pulp vat. A remarkable development at Malmoe is the using of hydro-electrical current for generating steam. In the day-time, hydro-electrical power is fully employed. At night it has little use, and is therefore cheap. So at night the current is applied directly to water, and the steam generated is stored in accumulators, and this accumulated steam is used'- for power purposes in the day-time, when the hydro-elec-trical power is otherwise employed. To people whose attention has been concentrated on the duel between hydro-electrical power and the electrical power derived from coal and steam, this Swedish device may come as a surprise. Here is electrical current taking the place of coal as a generator of steam power. Countries that have no coal or which have particular need to conserve their coal, may well prolong their steam age by using hydroelectricity as tho primary power.